Ingredients

Ingredients are, of course, a very important part of any written recipe. So important that the success or failure depends on exactly how those ingredients are listed.

Let's use nuts for example. Many recipes call for nuts, sometimes whole but often chopped, sliced, diced, or minced. It's those descriptions that will make or break the recipe.

One cup of walnuts tells me to use walnut halves, in tact. Later on, within the text of the instructions, I may be directed to chop, slice, dice, or mince that one cup of walnut halves. Or I may be directed to leave them as they are, in nice pretty halves.

One cup of chopped walnuts in the ingredients list is a whole different ball game, though. One empty measuring cup will hold lots more chopped walnuts than it will hold of halves left whole. And the finer / smaller those nuts are chopped, the more will fit into the measuring cup. That means I'll have to start out with a lot more walnut halves if the ingredients list specifies chopped walnuts, by volume such as one cup's worth, than if it calls for one cup of walnuts.

The same approach applies to all recipes - apple pie, chopped liver, whatever. Whenever the ingredients list specifies a particular handling of the individual ingredient, make sure to prepare the ingredient accordingly before assembling the recipe.

In our example, one cup of walnuts is definitely not equal to one cup of chopped walnuts.